Kansas Raiders (1950)

Kansas Raiders is a 1950 Universal-International western starring Audie Murphy and a very interesting western it is too.

Murphy plays a very young Jesse James. Now you have to remember that this is a Hollywood movie so it has zero interest in historical accuracy. Don’t assume that it’s going to follow the real-life story of Jesse James in any way, shape or form. That’s a particularly important point to bear in mind with this movie since any assumptions you may make about James as either a hero or a villain will lead you astray.

It is 1863, the middle of the Civil War. The movie opens out west, with a group of young men heading for the headquarters of the famous (or infamous) guerrilla leader Quantrill (Brian Donlevy). They want to join up. Quantrill’s admirers see him as a brave and bold warrior for the Confederacy. His detractors regard him as the leader of a gang of thieves and murderers.

Jesse James as we see him in the early part of this movie is a very likeable very pleasant young man. The sort of young man we expect to see as the hero in a western. He rescues a young lady when her horses bolt and both she and her cart seem headed for disaster. He’s the kind of young guy who saves the lives of ladies in peril.

And then suddenly we get a glimpse of a darker side to him. It’s a scene that has been repeated in countless westerns and adventure films. The hero has to fight a duel, in this case a fight to the death with knives, with a man who has tried to bully and insult him. We know what will happen. The hero will win, the bad guy will be disarmed and lying helpless waiting for the killing blow, and of course the hero will let him live because heroes do not kill helpless unarmed men. But in this case Jesse unhesitatingly delivers the killing blow. It’s a shocking moment of ruthless violence that you just don’t see in Hollywood movies in 1950. This is clearly going to be an unusual western.

There is more brutal violence to come. There are several scenes in which unarmed men who have surrendered are ruthlessly gunned down.

Jesse is appointed an officer in Quantrill’s guerrilla army. Jesse’s admiration for Quantrill knows no bounds. Then disillusionment starts to set in. Quantrill’s guerrilla army really is nothing more than a band of cut-throats and murderers. This is indicative of the overall mood of cynicism in this movie. There’s a Union guerrilla army, known as the Red Legs, operating in the same territory. They are also cut-throats and murderers. In fact Jesse has first-hand experience of the Red Legs. They slaughtered most of his family a few weeks earlier. Jesse is obsessed by thoughts of revenge. He is twisted up inside by hate. But he is at the same time fundamentally decent. He is a very conflicted young man. There’s some nice moral ambiguity in this movie.

There’s a definite cynicism towards war in this movie. Those who lead men to war talk of glory and honour but in practice war is nothing more than butchery. This is a dark grim violent movie.

This movie sets itself a difficult problem from the outset but it’s the way it tackles that problem that makes it such a fascinating movie. The focus is on young Jesse James and his brother Frank and their three buddies who would later go on to be the core of the James Gang. Jesse is very much the protagonist. We have to be able to relate to him. These young man have to be presented in a reasonably sympathetic light but they would go on to violent criminal careers and the movie itself focuses on their activities as party of a notorious band of thieves and murderers. The solution adopted was to portray them as innocents misled into wrongdoing by the charismatic evil Quantrill. And in particular Jesse is portrayed as being totally under the spell of Quantrill - he has a romantic notion of Quantrill as a brave fighter for freedom.

Of course as the truth about Quantrill becomes increasingly obvious Jesse becomes more and more conflicted and tortured. Jesse just cannot accept that he has become complicit in evil. This makes it a complex demanding part for Audie Murphy. Is Jesse a tragic hero or a tragic villain? He’s a bit of both. Murphy does a fine job. We might be exasperated by Jesse but at the same time we admire his loyalty to Quantrill, even if it’s tragically misguided loyalty.

Quantrill is evil, but he is also deluded. He seems to really believe that he is going to be the saviour of the South. It’s possible that at one time he really was a hero but he has spiralled downwards into self-delusion and fantasy.

A romance angle has been added. The woman (Kate, played by Marguerite Chapman) Jesse rescued at the start of the film turns up again at Quantrill’s headquarters. The movie has to be rather coy about her status. She is clearly Quantrill’s woman but that cannot be made too obvious.

The ending is really interesting and very effective.

Kansas Raiders is an exceptionally interesting western and it’s highly recommended.

The Kino Lorber Blu-Ray transfer looks superb.

La Ronde (1950)

La Ronde (1950), directed by Max Ophüls, was based on the 1897 play Reigen by Arthur Schnitzler. The play provoked outrage and was banned at one stage.

The movie follows the structure of the play. It is a round dance, although the movie also employs a carousel as a metaphor. It begins with a sexual encounter between a soldier and prostitute. The prostitute them moves on to another encounter with another man. That man in turns moves on the the next partner in the dance. She will go from him to another liaison. And so the dance continues.

It is the dance of love, and also the dance of sex. All of the encounters involve both love and sex, in varying amounts.

Each encounter is just a brief vignette but enough to tell us just how much each partner’s heart is engaged. Even when love is involved, it is still a game.

The structure could have made for a rather stagey film. It is theatrical, but also (thanks to the genius of Ophüls and his production designer) very very cinematic. It is deliberately and ostentatiously artificial. Anton Walbrook acts as a kind of master of ceremonies, leading us from one chapter to the next but he also plays multiple characters in the various chapters. And even when playing a character he breaks the fourth wall.

The setting is Vienna in 1900 but not for one second are we expected to believe that this is the real Vienna. This is the Vienna of Strauss waltzes and light opera, the Vienna of romance. The Vienna of the imagination.

Our attention is continually being drawn to the fact that this is not real life. Ophüls makes no concessions at all to realism. We are being told a delightful story but even if not a word of it is true we’re still going to be charmed by it.

This is a visually sumptuous, gorgeous movie. It was shot in black-and-white and could only have been shot in black-and-white. There’s a certain combination of glamour, style and artificiality that would never quite work in colour.


The difference between this movie, made in France in 1950, and Hollywood movies of the same period is staggering. There is a lot of sex in La Ronde. We don’t see it but we’re not left in the slightest doubt that every one of these encounters culminates in sex. No American studio would have dared even to contemplate making this movie. And it’s not just the amount of sex - it’s the movie’s cheerful immorality.

All of the characters are to some degree guilty of hypocrisy or deception but not one could be described as a villain or villainess. The philandering husband, the unfaithful wife, the professional whore and the part-time whore - they’re all basically decent sympathetic people. In a Hollywood movie the whore at least would have to be punished at the end but no-one gets punished here.

It’s a game, but the players know it’s a game. Nobody gets seduced unless they want to get seduced.

It’s a frivolous game, but the reason that the game of love and sex is so important is that it’s frivolous. Pleasure serves no purpose. That’s why it’s so important. That’s why we can’t live without it.

Ophüls has a dazzling cast with which to work. Simone Signoret, Simone Simon and Danielle Darrieux all stand out. Anton Walbrook was a major star at the time and he turns on the charm, with a twinkle in his eye.

Watching La Ronde is like drinking vintage champagne. If you want to see it as offering a commentary on sexual hypocrisy you can but my advice is to just enjoy its intoxicating pleasures. Very highly recommended.

The Bluebell Films Blu-Ray looks lovely. It’s in French with English subtitles.

The film was remade in 1964 by Roger Vadim as La Ronde (or Circle of Love). Critics love to sneer at Vadim. I don’t care. I like his movies and his version is worth seeing as well. While Ophüls offers us fin-de-siecle decadence Vadim goes for a feel of 60s decadence. I like both.

Arthur Schnitzler was also the author of the fascinating 1926 short novel Traumnovelle, the source for Stanley Kubrick’s movie Eyes Wide Shut.

Daisy Miller (1974)

Peter Bogdanovich’s Daisy Miller came out in 1974 and pretty much wrecked his career. He had just had three major hits one after the other, What’s Up Doc?, The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon. He was seen as a bit of a bumptious upstart. He compounded his sins by casting his new girlfriend Cybill Shepherd in the lead role. And Daisy Miller was a very ambitious rather cerebral rather arty movie. Critics were only too happy to plunge their knives into him.

This movie also damaged Cybill Shepherd’s carer. Critics savaged her performance. One can’t help feeling that many critics were excessively hard on her merely because she was Bogdanovich’s girlfriend - it was a case of guilt by association (in much the same way as the trashing of Geena Davis’s career was collateral damage when critics went after Renny Harlin for Cutthroat Island).

In the case of Cybill Shepherd in Daisy Miller it was also a classic case of an actress giving exactly the performance her director wanted from her and then being savaged by critics for her trouble.

It’s easy to see why Daisy Miller bombed at the box office. It was out of step with public tastes in 1974. It’s also a movie that requires at least a very vague understanding of the social mores of the past. And it’s a movie that requires the audience to be fully engaged - it’s a subtle movie with some very subtle touches and those subtle touches are very important. And it is an art movie. It was just not a movie that was going to please a mass audience.

This is a story about misunderstandings and misjudgments and misinterpretations, all of which can add up and lead to very unfortunate consequences.

Daisy Miller (Cybill Shepherd) is a young girl from a nouveau riche American family doing the Grand Tour in Europe. In Switzerland she meets Frederick Winterbourne (Barry Brown). He’s American as well but he was educated in Europe. He understands the rules of respectable society. That doesn’t mean he’s respectable. We learn that he has just had an affair with a woman named Olga. But Frederick knows how to appear respectable and that’s what matters.

Daisy knows nothing of such social rules. She has not enjoyed the benefits of a good education. She simply ignores the rules. As a result she gives the impression of being vulgar and, even worse, she gives the impression that she might not be respectable. The crux of the story is whether Daisy really is innocent or not. Frederick fears that she may not be. In any case even though he is falling in love with her he is not going to take the risk of becoming entangled with a woman who is not respectable, or appears not to be respectable.

Daisy is obviously falling in love with Frederick but Frederick fails to understand this, as he fails to understand so many things.

This is a story of Americans in Europe, with American and European social mores being hopelessly incompatible, but it’s a bit more complicated that. It’s vital to bear in mind always that Daisy’s family are nouveau riche Americans. Blue-bloods, upper-class Americans, could adapt much more easily to European mores. But Daisy’s family have zero comprehension of the social mores of late 19th century Europe. They have no idea why they shock people.

Winterbourne’s family are Americans who have become totally acclimatised to European society. They are perfectly at ease in European society. They understand the social rules and they follow them. They have become so Europeanised that they no longer understand Americans like Daisy.

While some viewers might think the dialogue is anachronistic it was in fact mostly lifted directly from the 1879 Henry James novella. Some viewers might also think that some of Daisy’s behaviour is anachronistic but the movie follows the James story very very closely. Bogdanovich did not make this stuff up and Henry James did not make it up either. Henry James, as a 19th century American who lived in Europe, would have been very familiar with the social mores of the time among Europeans, among upper-class Americans and among nouveau riche Americans. Daisy Miller is not a fantasy creation. Such girls certainly existed.

It needs to be emphasised that both James and Bogdanovich are sympathetic to Daisy. She is certainly vulgar and uncultured but she’s honest and open. Winterbourne is a less sympathetic character. He is imprisoned by his prejudices which causes him to hopelessly misinterpret Daisy’s behaviour. He is also imprisoned by his fear of scandal. He loves Daisy but to marry her would be a huge social risk. But Winterbourne is not a villain. In his own way he is a tragic figure.

Cybill Shepherd understood exactly the performance the part required. She’s terrific. She's just right. Barry Brown is equally perfect as Winterbourne.

The visual approach of the movie is both subtle and ambitious. Bogdanovich pulls off some stunningly complex long takes with mirrors everywhere and he’s not being gimmicky. Seeing Daisy reflected in mirrors works - Winterbourne is never really able to see Daisy just as she is. He sees her reflected though his prejudices and his misinterpretations. But Bogdanovich is never showy for the sake of being showy.

Henry James has never been the easiest of writers to adapt to film. His fondness for irony and ambiguity are not easy to translate to the screen. Daisy Miller is not, as some critics have claimed, just a bold attempt that failed to come off. It does come off. It’s not a partial success. It’s a success. It’s a wonderful movie and it’s very highly recommended.

The Kino Lorber Blu-Ray looks great and Bogdanovich’s audio commentary is very worthwhile. There’s also an interview with Cybill Shepherd. Both Bogdanovich and Shepherd remained extremely proud of this movie, and rightly so.

Love (1927)

Love (later retitled Anna Karenina) is an important movie in Greta Garbo’s filmography. She got to make this movie despite Louis B. Mayer’s attempt to destroy her career. She foiled that attempt by going over Mayer’s head to the owners of MGM. Love established Garbo as a star with the clout to pick her own projects, at least to some extent.

This movie also saw her moving away from her early vamp roles. This is the Garbo who became a legend - playing heroines who sacrifice everything for love.

Up to a point it follows Tolstoy’s novel, in a very superficial way. It’s a very long novel turned into a rather short film. The movie turns a complex story into a straightforward story of star-crossed lovers.

The setting is St Petersburg. Anna Karenina (Garbo) is married to the rich powerful Senator Karenin. She meets a handsome young Guards officer, Vronsky (John Gilbert). They are both stranded in a storm. They have to stay overnight in an inn. Nothing happens between them, but everything happens between them. The romantic/sexual fuse has been lit. There’s nothing either of them can do about it.

The first scene between Garbo and Gilbert is very long and it’s crucial. It’s a complex scene with all sorts of romantic and sexual approaches and hesitations and rebuffs. It’s the beginning of the obsessive love that the movie is all about. It’s done without any title cards. Garbo and Gilbert don’t need any help from title cards. We get the message.

The affair becomes more tempestuous. The scandal grows.

Anna’s problem is that she has a son. She will have to choose between Vronsky and her son. It is an impossible choice. As she tells Vronsky, she loves them both infinitely. But she will have to choose.

And eventually Anna’s husband will force her hand.

The film was shot with two radically different endings. Tragically the Warner Archive DVD includes only one of the endings and it’s a contrived and totally unsatisfactory ending which makes nonsense of the whole movie. This was an alternative ending for the benefit of exhibitors too afraid to risk screening a movie with anything other than a conventional happy ending. It’s very very difficult to judge this movie without being able to see the original ending.

There are some nuances which a lot of viewers today might miss. Anna’s husband is not a mere monster. He is not entirely unreasonable. He lays his cards on the table for Anna. He will turn a blind eye to her affair with Vronsky as long as she is very discreet. He will not tolerate a public scandal, or being publicly humiliated. Which is reasonable enough. But he also warns her that there will be consequences if she is not discreet. The problem is that Anna and Vronsky are not discreet.

This is Garbo in magnificent form as a woman tortured by love. John Gilbert is excellent. It’s the extraordinary chemistry between Garbo and John Gilbert that makes the 1927 silent version worth seeing.

The tragedy is that the moment they meet Anna and Vronsky are no longer in control. They both know that their love will end in disaster. It’s not they they know this and go ahead anyway. They have no choice. This is a love that cannot be denied. They have poured the wine and they will have to drink it.

Garbo also starred in a later sound version (in 1935) and that version is superior to the silent version.

Without seeing that original ending I honestly cannot say how good this movie really is, but Love is worth seeing for Garbo and Gilbert.

Diva (1981)

Diva, released in 1981, was the first feature film directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix and it also launched the cinéma du look movement in French film. One of the major criticisms of this movement is that it emphasised style over substance. We’ll get back to that.

Jules (Frédéric Andréi) is a young postman obsessed by opera singer Cynthia Hawkins

(Wilhelmenia Fernandez). He has made an illegal recording of one of her concerts. Since she has never made a legal recording this bootleg tape is potentially worth a lot of money although Jules is only interested in it for his own pleasure. There are people who want that tape and they have seen hoodlums after Jules in order to get it.

There’s another tape recording, made by a prostitute, which contains evidence that could bring down a criminal empire based on the smuggling of drugs and women. Just before the prostitute is killed she slips the tape into one of the panniers of Jules’ moped.

There’s another set of hoodlums pursuing poor Jules. They want that incriminating tape.

So there are two plots running in tandem. There are two sound recordings. Two sets of bad guys. Jules will become entangled with two women. Everything in this movie comes in pairs.

The two plots become fairly convoluted. Jules can’t really trust anybody. People are not necessarily what they seem to be. Jules is in over his head.

Gorodish (Richard Bohringer) may be on his side. Gorodish is an enigmatic figure. He seems to be passive but as the movie progresses he becomes more active and more important. There’s also Gorodish’s cute young roller-skating Vietnamese girlfriend Alba although whether she is actually his girlfriend isn’t quite clear. Things are not always as they seem to be in this movie.

Jules is more than a little obsessed by Cynthia Hawkins. He bluffs his way into her hotel room. He steals one of her dresses and gets a prostitute to wear the dress while he has sex with her. Then he gives the dress back to Cynthia. Yes, Jules is an odd young man.

Jules steadily becomes more obsessed by Cynthia.

There’s another murder. There are several cleverly staged chases. Jules has lots of narrow escapes. There’s gunplay. Things get blow up. The two plot strands never quite come together but that adds to the paranoia. Jules doesn’t know which set of bad guys will come after him next.

Apart from the obsession with doubles there’s a running theme of artificiality opposed to reality. Some things are real. Some things appear real. Cynthia will not record her voice because she believes that only a live performance is authentic.

This is certainly a visually stunning movie. The loft in which Jules lives is wonderful - lots of wrecked cars plus paintings of car accidents about to happen (appropriate since Jules’ life is an accident waiting to happen). Other sets and locations are equally impressive and mostly with a touch of the surreal or the hyper-real. There’s not much in this movie that we can confidently say corresponds to normal everyday reality. It’s not a case of dreams being confused with reality but perhaps more a case of art opposed to reality.

Beineix loved comic books and the movie does at time have a slight comic book look.

The Blu-Ray release includes a partial commentary track by Jean-Jacques Beineix. It’s interesting in revealing his thinking and mostly it’s interesting because it reveals just how trite his thinking was. Advertising has become all-pervasive. There’s a conflict between art and commercialism. Industrial design (such as car design) can be art. Wow, that’s all just so deep and profound. It’s what you’d expect from a first year film student.

Which gets us back to the style over substance argument. Personally I think you’ll appreciate this movie more if you see it as an exercise in pure style. Forget the substance. Who needs substance when when you can come up with style as impressive as this?

Diva is a must-see movie purely for its stylistic flourishes. While it came out right at the beginning of the decade Diva does have a very 80s look, but in a good way. And it is a lot of fun. Highly recommended.

Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray looks great and includes lots of extras for those who are into that sort of thing (I’m not).

A Lady of Chance (1928)

A Lady of Chance is a 1928 MGM silent film starring Norma Shearer. It’s a lighthearted comic crime melodrama/romantic melodrama.

A Lady of Chance was shot as a silent film. By this time audiences were losing interest in silent films so MGM added some dialogue scenes. That soundtrack is apparently lost so the movie now survives only as a silent movie. What we get on the DVD is a modern score - I turned the volume down to zero as quickly as possible. I’ll watch a silent movie with no sound at all rather than endure a modern score.

Dolly Morgan, nicknamed Angel Face (Norma Shearer), is a con artist. She’s working the old badger game. It’s a racket she knows well.

She has a prime sucker lined up. His name is Hammond. Hammond knows that Dolly isn’t exactly a respectable girl. That’s OK, he doesn’t want a respectable girl. He wants a bit of fun. He knows that girls like Dolly don’t give away their favours without getting a few presents in return. Of course he doesn’t know just how much his fun is going to cost him this time. It’s going to cost him ten grand (an immense amount of money in 1928). He’ll have to pay up because if his wife finds out he’s in big trouble. She is not a very understanding woman.

Dolly is working this racket on her own, but unluckily for her she runs into two former partners-in-crime, Brad (Lowell Sherman) and Gwen (Gwen Lee). They want a piece of the action. Of course they intend to double-cross Dolly and she intends to double-cross them. When it comes to double crosses Dolly is an expert. She ends up holding the ten grand but she will have to make a hasty departure.

Dolly has a new sucker lined up, Steve Crandall (Johnny Mack Brown). This could be it, the big score that every girl in Dolly’s line of work hopes will come along. Steve is a cement tycoon which sounds promising enough but when he tells her about the plantation back home, in the South, she knows she’s hit the jackpot. Ten grand is chicken feed compared to a score like this.

And the best thing is that Steve is as dumb as a rock. He even offers to marry her. She can’t wait to see that plantation. When she arrives in Steve’s home town there will of course be some surprises in store for her.

Dolly has been thrown for a loop and now the last thing she needs is for Brad and Gwen to turn up. Which of course they do.

While it’s not a conventional formulaic romantic comedy this is a movie that combines comedy with romance. It is amusing, and it is very romantic.

The acting is pretty good. Johnny Mack Brown makes Steve suitably innocent and naïve but he’s so well-meaning we can’t despise him.

Lowell Sherman and Gwen Lee are fun as likeable rogues. Gwen Lee in fact is a delight. Lowell Sherman’s reputation hasn’t stood the test of time which is perhaps a little unfair.

Norma Shearer is fine and she manages to sell us on Dolly’s sudden change of heart. It’s a brittle amusing performance. These four main players really work extremely well together. Norma Shearer looks fabulous, which is easy for an actress to do when she has the great Adrian designing her gowns.

Robert Z. Leonard is not a director you’ll find on most people’s great directors lists and he’s not one of the darlings of auteurist critics but he made some extraordinarily good and interesting movies, include the superb 1949 noir The Bribe and the very underrated pre-code Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise).

This is a very lightweight movie but it doesn’t pretend to be anything else and it has a breezy charm. Highly recommended if you’re in the mood for something frothy.

The Warner Archive DVD presentation is very good.

I haven’t seen a huge number of Norma Shearer’s films. I want to see more but her movies are remarkably difficult to find. I do highly recommend one of her earlier silent pictures, Lady of the Night (1925), in which she plays dual roles.

Destry (1954)

Destry is 1954 Audie Murphy western based on a novel by Max Brand. There were two film adaptations in the 1930s including a fairly admired 1939 version (with the title Destry Rides Again) directed by George Marshall. In 1954 Marshall directed another version, simply called Destry, with Audie Murphy in the role played by James Stewart in the ’39 film. This is the film reviewed here.

I’ve seen the 1939 movie but it was so long ago that I was able to approach this 1954 remake with an open mind.

Restful is the name of the town but restful it ain’t. It’s run by a very shady businessman and gambler named Decker (Lyle Bettger). Decker has the crooked Mayor Sellers (Edgar Buchanan) is his pocket and a gang of gunmen.

Restful is without a sheriff after the previous holder of that office, Sheriff Joe Bailey, suffered a fatal heart attack. That’s what it says on the death certificate but the death certificate neglected to mention that by an amazing coincidence the heart attack happened at the exact same moment that the sheriff got a bullet in the back. This occurred shortly after a dispute over a poker game in which Decker cheated Henry Skinner (Walter Baldwin) out of his ranch. Decker cheated with some help from sexy saloon girl and chanteuse Brandy (Mari Blanchard).

To ensure that they have no problems with nosy sheriffs Decker and the major appoint hopeless drunk Rags Barnaby (Thomas Mitchell) as sheriff. Rags then has a brainwave. Years earlier, before he crawled inside a bottle, Rags had been the deputy of a legendary sheriff named Destry. Destry had a son, Tom. Rags hasn’t seen the son for years but he figures he’s bound to be a tough two-fisted fast-shooting lawman.

When Tom Destry (Audie Murphy) arrives in town all Rags’ hopes are dashed. Tom is a quiet inoffensive young man who looks like he would faint if he saw a gun. And Tom makes it clear that as deputy he has no intention of carrying a gun. Tom is a tenderfoot who will clearly be no use at all.

Appearances are of course deceptive. Tom Destry doesn’t carry a gun and he doesn’t believe in shooting people but underneath the gentle bookish exterior there is steel. Destry is tough and brave. He’s just not tough and brave in a way that involves shooting people. And he’s smart. Why try out-shooting criminals when you can out-think them?

Destry is determined to clean up Restful, and bring the murderer of Sheriff Bailey to justice.

This is the sort of thing Audie Murphy did particularly well, playing an unconventional hero. He plays this hero as a seriously nice guy but he convinces the viewer that Destry is actually quite formidable in his own way. And of course Audie Murphy had a very high likeability factor. I think Murphy’s performance works just fine.

Mari Blanchard has a tougher challenge, playing the role played by Marlene Dietrich in the ’39 film. She’s no Dietrich but she’s not pretty good. She gets several musical numbers which she handles well enough.

Thomas Mitchell as Rags and Edgar Buchanan as the sleazy mayor are of course huge amounts of fun. Wallace Ford as the town’s incompetent doctor and Alan Hale Jr as a hot-headed cattleman are also excellent. Lori Nelson gets saddled with the thankless good girl role but she’s OK.

As I said earlier I have only dim memories of the 1939 Destry Rides Again so I can’t compare the two movies. Judged on its own merits Destry is a pretty good western. Recommended.

Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray (in their Audie Murphy Collection II boxed set) offers a nice transfer. Being a 1954 Universal International release the movie was shot in Technicolor and looks great.

I’ve seen and reviewed quite a few Audie Murphy westerns. Their quality is variable but Murphy’s performances are always good. Hell Bent for Leather (1960) and No Name on the Bullet (1959) are superb. Ride Clear of Diablo (1954) and the Don Siegel-directed The Duel at Silver Creek (1952) are reasonably OK.